CHICAGO — About 300 Border Patrol agents were among the federal officers who made a torrent of arrests, deployed tear gas nearly 50 times, tased and assaulted residents and shot two people — one fatally — during Operation Midway Blitz in the Chicago area last year. That all happened even though those Border Patrol agents had extensive experience and training, many in crowd control and deescalation, a Block Club Chicago investigation found. They averaged more than a decade on the job, and about two-thirds of them had some form of special training. More than 100 had “Mobile Field Force” training, which includes deescalating civil unrest and crowd control. Still, Block Club found that in at least 52 separate incidents across the Chicago area, agents used force against individuals and crowds by deploying tear gas, pepper spray or tasers, tackling or physically assaulting them, or chasing or ramming them with their cars. After many of those uses of force, agents filed reports with narratives that were contradicted by their own body-camera footage, showing they lied about what they did, misrepresented the actions of bystanders and protesters, overcounted alleged assaults against them, undercounted their own uses of force or failed to report some uses of force altogether. A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said agents face increasing threats against them and “are trained to use the minimum amount of force necessary to resolve dangerous situations to prioritize the safety of the public and our officers.” However, Gil Kerlikowske, who served as Customs and Border Protection commissioner from 2014 to 2017, said agents used force more aggressively during Midway Blitz than they did at the border during his tenure, and they seemed to have support to do so from their leadership. Border Patrol Chief Greg Bovino, for example, sent messages to some agents congratulating and supporting them after they used force. “Throwing tear gas, using pepper-balls, the body-slamming — none of those are the tactics that city police officers engage [in] unless it’s a last resort,” Kerlikowske said. In most of their incident reports, Border Patrol agents noted their operations were “in direct support of Presidential Executive Orders.” The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which includes Customs and Border Protection, has released little information about its agents’ identities, credentials or marching orders during Midway Blitz. Border Patrol agents made up the bulk of federal agents deployed. Most of the agents wore masks during the operation. Block Club’s investigation identified 271 of those agents. Through an analysis of more than 100 hours of body-camera footage and nearly 100 written reports, Block Club identified their names, years of experience, training backgrounds and involvement in at least 150 reported uses of force in 52 incidents across the Chicago area. Those records were released as part of a lawsuit Block Club and other media organizations filed against the federal government last year. Block Club’s analysis found that two of the three Midway Blitz agents who engaged in the most use-of-force incidents each had more than 15 years of experience. Kristopher Hewson, a supervising agent with 19 years of experience, was listed as the “supervisor notified” in several use-of-force incidents, and he reported using force himself in five, among the most documented uses of force by any agent. The incidents included pepper spraying a 15-year-old boy at close range on Oct. 23 in Little Village and throwing tear gas at a crowd of protesters Oct. 24 in Lakeview. Supervisory agent Mark A. Clinton, who has 16 years of experience, pepper-sprayed people on three occasions. On Oct. 30, Clinton and agent Jaime Duenas, who has 19 years of experience, engaged in a high-speed chase that ended with an arrest inside of Warren Township High School in Gurnee, north of Chicago. Border Patrol Agents Jaime Duenas and Raymond Ritz arrested a man who ran inside of Warren Township High School on Oct. 30 in Gurnee, Il. (Block Club Chicago) Perhaps most well-known is Charles Exum, who was placed on administrative leave after shooting Chicagoan Marimar Martinez five times on Oct. 4. Exum had nearly 21 years on the job when he shot Martinez. The two other agents in the vehicle with Exum wrote a report that was later contradicted by video of the incident. Federal officials dropped charges against Martinez after lawyers presented evidence of those contradictions and text messages in which Exum bragged about the shooting. Immigration agents assigned to Chicago frequently wrote in reports that they were “targeting immigration violators” in a “confined, civilian-heavy environment” with a goal to “enhance public safety.” The agents often claimed civilians attacked them or refused orders before agents used force. But a state commission is offering a competing picture. Based on video evidence and accounts from locals’ harrowing experiences with agents, the Illinois Accountability Commission found that the Trump administration encouraged agents to act recklessly. “Federal officials did not just tolerate lawlessness,” said commission Vice Chair Patricia Brown Holmes, a former Cook County judge and county and federal prosecutor. “They encouraged it, they shielded it, and they made a grand bargain with the agents to deliver arrests: Occupy the city through fear, and we will protect you, even if you violate the Constitution.” Trained For Civil Unrest, Counter-Terrorism And Manhunts — Then Attacking Civilians What This Story Took For this story, Investigative Editor Crystal Paul watched and analyzed hundreds of body-camera videos and extracted information from more than 100 incident reports. From those reports, she manually created a database of names, ages, professional experience and training for 271 agents. She also extracted and analyzed information about uses of force and assaults, linking them to the agents who reported them. Block Club found that most agents involved in Operation Midway Blitz had undergone at least some special training outside of basic academy instruction. Nearly 40 were trained as instructors for the use of less-lethal force, while more than 100 agents were trained specifically in deescalation tactics for crowd control and civil unrest — a training called Mobile Field Force, Block Club’s analysis found. A DHS spokesperson agreed that agents are “highly trained in de-escalation tactics and defensive driving.” “They regularly receive ongoing use of force training,” the spokeperson wrote in an email. “Many of our agents have backgrounds in the military or local law enforcement and Border Patrol agents receive extensive federal law enforcement training.” Yet body-camera footage shows agents rarely using deescalation and crowd control tactics associated with Mobile Field Force training. “Mobile Field Force, it talks about de-escalation. It talks about the use of batons, you know, and the position of batons, etc. You didn’t see any of that,” Kerlikowske said. “So saying, ‘Oh, we had Mobile Field Force training,’ frankly, it doesn’t really mean much.” Instead, in their reports, agents regularly justified using force by characterizing crowds as “volatile,” while body-camera footage often showed a tamer scene. A federal agent holds up what appears to be a canister of chemical agent as federal agents detained a construction worker in the 3300 block of North Lakewood Avenue in Lakeview, and then threw chemical agents at responding neighbors on Oct. 24, 2025. Credit: Colin Boyle/Block Club Chicago For example, on Oct. 24, three agents — Hewson, Joshua A. McBee and Dalton J. Smith — jumped over a locked fence into the yard of a home in Lakeview, detained a construction worker and threatened another with a gun. The local alderman later said the owner of the building reported agents seemingly watching it for weeks prior. While the worker was in handcuffs, Hewson, the supervisory agent, threatened to throw the detained man over the fence, then struck his chest and arms. Smith, who has almost three years of experience with Border Patrol, threatened the worker with pepper spray, body-camera footage shows. None of these threats or uses of force were included in the incident report. An excerpt from the Oct. 24 incident report showing two reported uses of force and six alleged assaults. After the agents placed the man in their SUV, Hewson claimed in reports that a crowd of people formed around agents. The crowd “kept encroaching around us,” preventing the agents’ vehicles from leaving, Hewson wrote. He threw two canisters of tear gas into the crowd of people, according to his report. Hewson cited his professional experience and his recent experience in previous cities as a reason for his decision to throw tear gas. “Being in Los Angeles and Chicago for the past 5 months, I have seen crowds damage vehicles as they are leaving since it emboldens them,” he wrote in his report. But body-camera footage shows a different scene. Protesters slowly followed the agents’ car as it backed down the street. One man identified himself to Hewson as an attorney and insisted the crowd was not obstructing agents. “Do not tell people to stop,” he said to Hewson. “I am an attorney. We are not interfering —” Hewson got into the vehicle. Holding a tear gas canister out of the car’s window, Hewson shouted for the residents to “get back” and warned that he would gas them. Smith said, “Throw it for fun.” “They had gotten the workers they’d kidnapped inside, and the community came out — yelling, filming, blowing whistles, giving them a piece of their mind,” neighbor Courtney Conway told Block Club shortly after Hewson threw the gas. “No one was being aggressive whatsoever, and they just started deploying tear gas.” “Throw it for fun.” Border Patrol agent Dalton J. Smith, speaking to his colleagues about throwing a gas canister in Lakeview Hewson reported his use of gas that day to Supervisory Agent Efrain Garcia Jr., 53, a 33-year veteran who was also on site at the time, according to Hewson’s report. Garcia is one of the most experienced agents to take part in Operation Midway Blitz. He’s also one of nearly 50 agents who had even more specialized credentials as members of the Border Patrol Tactical Unit, or BORTAC. The highly trained unit is typically deployed for drug raids, manhunts and other counter-terrorism and narcotics operations along the southern border. In 2022, the Border Patrol Tactical Unit led the team that entered Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, and killed a mass shooter. Their training is “analogous to the FBI hostage rescue team,” Kerlikowske said. That specialized training was part of the problem this fall, he said. “All of the training is more about high risk, going after people that are armed,” Kerlikowske said. “So using them for public-order policing is not a particularly good fit.” Border Patrol Tactical Unit agents and others in the agency’s “Special Response Team” were present at 43 Midway Blitz incidents and reported using force in at least 19 of those incidents. In 16 of them, agents reported using chemical agents, including tear gas, pepper spray and pepper-balls. “When faced with violence or attempts to impede law enforcement operations, our officers will take legal and necessary steps to ensure their own safety and that of bystanders, up to and including use of force and chemical munitions,” wrote a DHS spokesperson. “CBP agents and officers are to be commended for the restraint shown while facing hundreds of agitators and anarchists.” At least one Border Patrol Tactical Unit agent and one Special Response Team agent were present during the hours-long standoff in Brighton Park that followed agent Exum shooting Martinez on Oct. 4. The incident led to agents tear-gassing protesters and exposing 27 Chicago police officers to the chemicals. Hugo Sanchez, the Special Response Team agent, reported firing from inside his vehicle a “volley” of pepper-balls at people in a “mob” throwing objects at agents. Sanchez noted in the report that Border Patrol Tactical Unit agents in another vehicle tear-gassed the crowd. An apartment unit’s door is seen busted open to a room flooded with water damage at 7500 S. South Shore Drive in South Shore on Oct. 1, 2025. The apartment building was raided by federal agents the morning before. Credit: Colin Boyle/Block Club Chicago Perhaps most notably, at least three Border Patrol Tactical Unit agents participated in the highly scrutinized raid of a South Shore apartment building on Sept. 30, in which agents employed SWAT-style tactics, such as rappelling onto the building from a helicopter and knocking down doors. During the raid, agent Padraic Daniel Berlin, a Border Patrol Tactical Unit agent with more than 12 years on the job, released his patrol dog into one of the apartments. He later reported that one man was injured when the dog bit the man on the lower right leg. Agents arrested 37 people that night. The government claimed that two of them were gang members but has not yet filed any charges against any of those arrested, according to ProPublica. We know this type of journalism matters to you. Join our fight for transparency and accountability by donating to support our investigative team, The Watch. Unbalanced Accounting Of Assaults Versus Uses Of Force Agents regularly cited “assaults” by protesters as justification for using chemical agents and other force. But Block Club’s analysis of these reports shows agents regularly overstated alleged assaults while undercounting their uses of force. In reporting assaults, agents regularly counted a single action by a civilian — such as kicking a tear-gas canister back at agents — as multiple assaults, one for each agent present, regardless of whether an included agent was actually impacted. Meanwhile, agents counted each action against civilians as a single use of force regardless of the number of people impacted. For example, Moses Ely Espinoza, a Special Response Team agent with over 18 years of experience, and Anthony Melendez, a Border Patrol Tactical Unit agent, both reported tear-gassing protesters Sept. 19 outside the ICE facility in suburban Broadview. Tear gas is deployed as dozens of protesters gather at the entrance of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Broadview on Sept. 19, 2025. Credit: Audrey Richardson for Block Club Chicago Espinoza wrote that he was “dispersing the mob” after being hit in the leg with a rock. Melendez reported he threw a gas grenade to clear a crowd blocking the building’s exit after the tactical smoke he used “had no effect.” Three other Special Response Team agents who provided backup to federal agents outside the facility that day reported shooting rubber bullets or pepper-balls. Across two reports, the 11 agents on scene that day reported 21 total uses of force, most of which consisted of firing pepperballs, flashbang